This is a continuation of hiking and exploration in Valley of Fire State Park and nearby areas, Nevada. All of the photos in this post were shot with an iPhone 14 and converted to monochrome.
This “Dark Shelter” is not in Valley of fire. This is along a 4 wheel drive road outside the park.
More from the Nevada desert later,
Ken
This is a continuation of scouting and exploration in Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada in March of 2023.
The geology here is fascinating. The rocks have interesting variation in texture and color.
If one looks closely, one can just barely pick out hikers on the right side slope of that big dome in the background.
To be continued,
Ken
A continuation of images made during a hike in Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada in March of 2023.
There were a few arches in the canyon walls bordering this hiking trail. Small arches are plentiful in this area.
This trail ends at a drop off into a narrow chasm, which at this time of the year contained a pool of water.
Another small arch atop a rock outcrop.
Another small, but still sizable arch along the trail.
Light bouncing around inside some of the smaller arches and holes in the rocks creates interesting color, bringing out the patterns in the rock. This one looks like an eye in a rugged face.
More exploration photos next,
Ken
We returned to an area in Valley of Fire State park to finish a hike we has abandoned a day or so previously.
There were many petroglyphs on the rock faces along the narrow valley that we hiked through.
I only carried my iPhone on this hike, which was not sufficient for adequately capturing petroglyphs higher up on some of the valley walls.
The image above indicates that some petroglyphs have been lost due to erosion of the rock face.
To be continued,
Ken
My son and I utilized the middle of the day hours to drive around, exploring the local area and generally sight seeing. We traveled to Lake Mead and Hoover Dam on a couple of occasions.
The Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge is like art and an engineering marvel rolled into one, which is fitting for this location, the site of the magnificent Hoover Dam, built over a period of 5 years from 1931 to 1936. That such a structure could be built in those early years of the 20th century is an astounding engineering feat.
I had to be sure to have a firm grip on my iPhone as I leaned over the walkway to shoot downward at the face of Hoover Dam. It was a windy day and the wind hitting the dam face was deflected upward with a significant velocity.
The image above is of Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam. The bleached rock layers indicate the historic level of Lake Mead. This is a very large reservoir, so that indicated drop in the water level represents a tremendous amount of water that is no longer in the reservoir. Reading about the effect of the long drought in this area is concerning, but actually seeing the visible indication of how much water is gone, is much more impressive and startling. Maybe the recent heavy precipitation in this area will provide some respite, but it will take years of above average rainfall to replenish this reservoir. In the meantime, people whose water supply depends upon this water resource are having to adapt to using much less water.
Large man made reservoirs in the western U.S. have allowed more people to move into previously arid desert areas and increased farming and ranching activity, but now the lack of water resources is having dire effects upon that population and agricultural activity.
The drive between the Valley of Fire area and Hoover Dam is a scenic one along Northshore Drive.
One can see from the clouds in these photos, that the weather was unsettled at times with intermittent rain and gusty winds and the light on the landscape changed as the clouds moved over. The clouds added much drama to the sky and to the photographs.
Until next time,
Ken
There are many arches of various sizes all through out Valley of Fire State Park and in this area, in general, where the sandstone has been eroded away over long time intervals of exposure to wind, rain, freezing and thawing. The arches are not on the size of those found in Utah’s Arches National Park, but seemingly more numerous.
Sunlight reflects around inside the arches, creating wonderful lighting on the rock surface.
The arches in this post are found along a short hiking trail and can be spotted by looking up into the canyon walls, which can be spectacular, too.
There is an open area along this trail with many nice cholla cacti. I had to refrain from trying to photograph each one, as I’ve always found these enticing.
We stopped short of completing this hike today, since we wanted to get to an area that we had chosen for sunset photos.
We will revisit this area later,
Ken
My oldest son, also a photo enthusiast and excellent photographer, met me in Snow Canyon on the first morning of my stay. The weather forecast called for considerable rainfall for our location over the next few days, so we began to consider our options. After some discussion and exploration of not too far away areas, we decided it best to move into Nevada in the vicinity of Valley of Fire State Park.
Valley of Fire State Park has two camping areas, one with full hookups for RVs and another with no hook ups, but water available. At the time of our visit, those campgrounds were still on a first come first serve basis. This is a popular destination in the spring, so it is difficult to get a camping spot. We stayed a few miles outside the park on BLM land for the first several night, traveling into the park and into adjacent areas. We made a few passes through the campsites, while in the park, looking for open sites. It was not unusual to see would be campers waiting in line for a campsite to be vacated that could be claimed.
As is our normal practice, we scouted areas for photography and I made many photos with my iPhone, during these outings. So part of this series of blogs will contain mostly those scouting photos.
I got down low to photograph this small cactus, making it look much larger than it is.
Late day sunlight lights up the rocks in Valley of Fire, enhancing the color, shadows and textures.
We spotted these two desert sheep as we were driving. I shot these from the vehicle. That slope is much steeper than this image makes it appear and the soil is loose, making their hooves slip with each step. These animals have a remarkable balance and the ability to navigate steep rugged terrain.
There is an old CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp) multiple room crude cabin used by CCC members, who worked in the park during the Great Depression, in the park. The following image is from the larger of the three rooms.
More later,
Ken
I set out from my campsite before sunrise on the first morning after my arrival in Snow Canyon to hike to my chosen location for sunrise photography. It was a crisply cold morning, which I dressed for, but I was soon unzipping my jacket as my body generated heat from the gentle uphill hike.
I stopped at a location near petrified sand dunes, chose a location to set up my camera and waited for sunrise, making a few pre-sunrise images.
I’ve always liked the lighting just before sunrise and I often like those images better than those after the direct sunlight hits the subject.
I made a number of images as the direct rays of the rising sun began to impinge upon the distant canyon walls and add color to the sky.
After seeing the early morning rays touching the uppermost parts of the highest peaks, I began to hike back towards my campsite, looking for other scenes to photograph.
The park has rules requiring visitors to stay on the official trails, which is limiting for photographers. It does not appear that those rules are rigidly enforced. There were numerous footprints and even bike tire tracks in the sand, adding unsightly features in my photos. Sometimes I will edit these out or at least try to mute those via editing, but many times I think the editing introduces undesirable artifacts, so I might not eliminate all such features. It is likely that casual observers will not note the edits, but knowing where the edits are, I can nearly always see unnatural results and would rather not introduce those into my photos.
Until next time,
Ken
In late March of 2023, I traveled to Snow Canyon State Park in Utah with the intention of staying here a full week. The park features, which are impressive, are essentially located along the roadway that goes through the park. However, due to the orientation of the canyon, sunrise works for golden hour photography in some portions of the park, but sunset golden hour is either very limited or non-existent. This was a disappointment, as that greatly limited my photographic possibilities here.
After checking into my campsite, I drove towards the south exit/entrance (I had entered via the north entrance) to check out the scenery in that direction and to get a cell phone signal. There is only a weak, at best, phone signal at the campground, but a good signal at and near the south entrance.
On my way back to the campsite, I stopped to check out Jenny’s Canyon, a very short slot canyon that is accessible via a short hike from the roadway.
I stopped to shoot this image of the canyon wall, that I hiked towards, which is the rock formation where Jenny’s Slot Canyon is located.
I noted this rock atop a portion of the canyon wall, that I dubbed “Big Mouth Rock” for obvious reason.
Sunlight filtering down into narrow canyons can create some remarkable color contrast on the canyon walls. The image above is shot looking upwards towards the sky from within the short slot canyon.
Usually, I find something of interest to photograph in route to my destination, but I found nothing of special interest during my first two days of the drive. Maybe I wasn’t looking intently enough and too preoccupied with getting to my stops. Although, I did see this group of deer near the entrance to my first overnight stop.
I’ve picked out a general location for sunrise photos tomorrow. The results are next up.
Ken
With only one day left of our fall 2022 Indiana visit, I traveled the backroads from our cabin one last time. Many trees were already bare, peak color was nearly all gone, it was overcast and threatening rain, so I hoped to find interesting barns, old homes or other interesting rural scenes to photograph.
Those three trees out front were probably planted with the anticipation of sitting on the porch in their shade some years down the road. The child’s bike beside the house makes me think that a family lived here or maybe a child visited grandparents here.
I saw numerous other interesting rural scenes similar to these, but either there was no place to pull off of the roadway to photograph those or those were set back too far on private property to approach without permission.
This is the final post for Indiana Fall 2022.
Thanks for following,
Ken
